Beacuse I had a week to kill between 2 longer trips and didn`t want to be stuck in Ulaan Bataar the whole time, I spent 2 days with a family that lives near Gaachuurt, just outside of UB, together with 2 American girls, Mallory and Amy. It was only a 1,5 hour drive from the capital, but it was a different world. They lived in a lovely green valley seemingly closed off from the rest of the world by high hills.

Our "mother", Daarimaa, had a notebook with English phrases written down phonetically in Mongolian, and we tried our best to use our Mongolian phrasebooks, though of course they never contain the phrase you are dying to say.

We also climbed a mountain (all right, it may have been just a hill, but it had an ovoo on top anyway) while singing songs from the sound of music. But if the Von Trapp family had smoked as much as us, they never would`ve made it over those mountains!